Such cutting apparatuses usually have a blade rotatably drivable in a cutting plane and a cutting edge. A food product to be cut up is pushed over the cutting edge during the cutting process, whereupon the blade, which can be made as a scythe-type blade or can be driven in a planetary orbiting manner, cuts a product slice from the food product. Since such cutting processes take place today at extremely high speeds and since a large quantity of products is cut within short times, it is desirable to be able to set the cutting gap, i.e. the spacing between the cutting plane and the cutting edge, precisely in order to achieve a good and uniform cutting quality and placing quality as well as good blade service lives.
An automatic positioning of cutting edges in a paper-cutting machine is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,259 in which use is made of a measured reference spacing value.